A post this morning on "The Way Forward for the American Creed" thread made the excellent point about the need to clearly and effectively say what the American Creed is all about-- to speak in positives.

Someone who has been doing that REALLY well in my opinion, is Glen Beck, whose show I watch most days.

Therefore, I'd like to open this thread for discussion of the points raised by GB.

A liberal friend expressed surprise at my interest in GB-- "Why even the ADL thinks he's anti-semitic" and sent me a copy of this from , , , either Pravda on the Hudson (NYT) or Pravda on the Beach (LA Times).

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Opinion

Who's watching Glenn Beck?Much like the Depression-era demagogue Father Charles Coughlin, the Fox News personality is promoting a mass movement. Should his bosses be pulling the plug?By Tim Rutten

November 25, 2009E-mail Print Share Text Size For nearly a century, the Anti-Defamation League has stared unflinchingly into the dark corners of America's social psyche -- the places where combustible tendencies such as hatred and paranoia pool and, sometimes, burst into flame.

As a Jewish organization, the ADL's first preoccupation naturally is anti-Semitism, but in the last few decades it has extended its scrutiny to the whole range of bigoted malevolence -- white supremacy, the militia movement, neo-nativism and conspiratorial fantasies in all of their improbable permutations. These days, the organization's research is characterized by the sense of proportion and sobriety that long experience brings.

That makes its recent report on the extremist groups and propagandists that have emerged since President Obama's election -- "Rage Grows In America: Anti-Government Conspiracies" -- particularly notable. For the first time in living memory, the ADL is sounding the alarm about a mainstream media personality: Fox News' Glenn Beck, who also hosts a popular radio show.

The report notes that while "other conservative media hosts, such as Rush Limbaugh and Sean Hannity, routinely attack Obama and his administration, typically on partisan grounds, they have usually dismissed or refused to give a platform to the conspiracy theorists and anti-government extremists." By contrast, "Beck and his guests have made a habit of demonizing President Obama and promoting conspiracy theories about his administration. ... Beck has even gone so far as to make comparisons between Hitler and Obama."

What gives all of this nonsense an ominous twist is Beck's announcement that he intends to use his TV and radio shows to promote a mass movement that will involve voter registration drives, training in community organizing and a series of regional conventions that will produce a "100-year plan" for America to be read from the steps of the Lincoln Memorial to a mass rally Aug. 28.

As Beck wrote on his website, "I know that the bipartisan corruption in Washington that has brought us to this brink and it will not be defeated easily. It will require unconventional thinking and a radical plan to restore our nation to the maximum freedoms we were supposed to have been protecting. ... All of the above will culminate in The Plan, a book that will provide specific policies, principles and, most importantly, action steps that each of us can take to play a role in this Refounding."

Hard times predictably throw up their demagogues. Still, even allowing for the frenetic pace of our wired world's 24-hour news cycle, it's remarkable how quickly the arc of Beck's career has come to resemble that of the Great Depression's uber-demagogue, Father Charles Coughlin. In the months after the crash of '29, Coughlin turned what had been a conventionally religious weekly radio broadcast into a platform for championing the downtrodden working man. He was an early supporter of the New Deal, coining the slogan "Roosevelt or Ruin," but quickly turned on the president for a variety of complex ideological and personal reasons. Coughlin flirted with Huey Long, launched an unsuccessful political party, published a popular newspaper, Social Justice, and even inspired and supported a kind of militia, the Christian Front, some of whose members were arrested by the FBI and charged with plotting a fascist coup.

As the 1930s dragged on, Coughlin, a longtime admirer of Francisco Franco, became virulently anti-Semitic, isolationist and pro-German. He also was extraordinarily popular. At their height, his weekly broadcasts attracted more than 40 million listeners. Still, after he lashed out at German Jews in the wake of Kristallnacht, many major urban radio stations dropped his program. Influential American prelates, the Vatican and prominent Catholic New Dealers had worked for some time to persuade Coughlin's superior, the archbishop of Detroit, to silence him. Shortly before the U.S. entered World War II, a new bishop was installed, and Coughlin was ordered to cease broadcasting. He accepted the clerical discipline and retired into a long life of bitter silence.

It's hard to imagine any contemporary cable system dropping Fox News simply because Beck is an offensively dangerous demagogue -- not with his ratings at least. His new foray into politics, though, presents Rupert Murdoch's network with a profound challenge. Is it willing to become the platform for an extremist political campaign, or will it draw a line as even the authoritarian Catholic Church of the 1940s did? CNN recently parted ways with its resident ranter, Lou Dobbs -- who now confirms he's weighing a presidential bid.

I noticed that Crafty mentioned watching Glen Beck daily and the LA TImes entertainment writer didn't. Someone told Tim Rutten that Glen Beck was overly provocative and the audience of vulnerable adults is dangerous so he wrote a piece about it. Rush has gone through that for 2 decades. Haters collect quotes and clips eliminating meaning and context. Then they post at the NY Times and left-wing sites and elites feel justified hating and ripping the program and its following.

I've listened to Glen Beck on radio plenty. His 'conspiracy' charge is that this administration's playbook is right out of extremist Saul Alinsky's radical rules. That happens to be true whether by design or coincidence. Rutten is accusing Beck of correctly noticing it and pointing it out. He suggests that Beck should be pulled off the air for doing so.

Also like Rush critics, he assumes the audience has no mind of their own and considers it dangerous for them to hear (honest) criticism of the President.

Why not take on ANY of Beck's points head-on, like that Valerie Jarret is a radical, Jeremy Wright - obviously, Van Jones and on and on and on. The attacker declined to do that.

I have no idea of the Hitler context, just know from listening that he has it wrong and that he was mum when worse was done to Bush, when Kerry, Durban, Murtha called our own troops terrorists, when Harry Reid declared the Iraq War lost, and when Obama and his Proxies ran a full page to say our commanding General was perhaps 'Betraying us'.

The selective outrage is sickening.

Regarding the Anti-defamation League: I assume ADL was once a respected group looking out for Jewish interests and unfair treatment. I regret linking them here when looking into the Pat Buchanan complaint because what I learned by looking was that besides some serious charges against PB's words, they went on and on accusing him of other bigotry that simply wasn't. For example, castigating him for not backing the gay preferred rights agenda or equating anti-welfare stances with racism. Those to me say something about their politics and agenda and nothing about him, and they dilute, weaken and cheapen their original point IMO assuming it had any validity in the first place.

"I've listened to Glen Beck on radio plenty. His 'conspiracy' charge is that this administration's playbook is right out of extremist Saul Alinsky's radical rules. That happens to be true whether by design or coincidence."

It IS by design. From Saul Alinsky's own son who blows the cover by pointing out the connection with Obama and his father is no coincidence:

****Communist guruSaul Alinsky’s son: “Obama learned his lesson well”

By Judi McLeod Tuesday, September 2, 2008 In Artful Dodger style, Barack Obama, plays down his mentorship with Communist author Saul Alinsky. But Alinsky’s son, L. David Alinsky, credits Obama for “learning his lesson well” from the Communist guru.

Indeed, Alinsky Jr. who credits his late father for the success of last week’s Democratic National Convention, may have done something that Obama’s detractors couldn’t: blown the cover on the presidential hopeful’s communist leanings.

No one can blame Alinsky for the pretentiousness of the Ancient Greek Temple from which Obama addressed plebes, or for the tacky neon colours on display at the Pepsi Centre, but it was Alinsky who wrote Rules for Radicals, the bible of the far left.

Says Alinsky’s son L. David Alinsky of his father’s influence at the Dem Convention: “ALL the elements were present: the individual stories told by real people of their situation and hardships, the packed-to-the rafters crowd, the crowd’s chanting of key phrases and names, the action on the spot of texting and phoning to show instant support and commitment to jump into the political battle, the rallying selections of music, the setting of the agenda by the power people.”

“The Democratic National Convention had all the elements of the perfectly organized event, Saul Alinsky style, the Communist guru’s son wrote in a letter published yesterday in the Boston Globe.

The Artful Dodger may be less than pleased that he has been pegged as a Saul Alinsky Poster Boy by the guru’s own son.

“Barack Obama’s training in Chicago by the great community organizers is showing its effectiveness,” Alinsky Jr. wrote to the Globe. “It is an amazingly powerful format, and the method of my late father always works to get the message out and get the supporters on board. When executed meticulously and thoughtfully, it is a powerful strategy for initiating change and making it really happen. Obama learned his lesson well.

“I am proud to see that my father’s model for organizing is being applied successfully beyond local community organizing to affect the Democratic campaign in 2008. It is a fine tribute to Saul Alinsky as we approach his 100th birthday.”

Alinsky should be reminded that the West has stared down communism everywhere it has raised its hideous head.

influencing a Democratic convention from the grave pales in comparison to the results that followed President Ronald Reagan’s famous words, “Mr. Gorbachev, take down this wall.”

The commonsense and freedom-loving Gipper would have chuckled at the audacity of Obama’s Ancient Greek Temple stage setting and would have told Obama what he told the world: “All great change in America begins at the dinner table.”

Reagan also said: “I have seen the rise and fall of Nazi tyranny, the subsequent cold war and the nuclear nightmare that for 50 years haunted the dreams of children everywhere. During that time my generation defeated totalitarianism. As a result, your world is poised for better tomorrows. What will you do on your journey?”

“Alinsky considered himself a realist above all, the ultimate pragmatist.” (American Thinker, Aug. 30, 2008). “As a confirmed atheist, Alinsky believed that the here and now is all there is, and therefore had no qualms about assorted versions of morality in the pursuit of worldly power. He didn’t coddle his radical acolytes or encourage their bourgeois distinctions between good and evil when it came to transferring power from the Haves to the Have Nots. Alinsky saw the already formed church communities as being the perfect springboards for agitation and creating bonds for demanding goods and services.”

Obama followed the same path.

It is a fact that activist-cum senator Barack Hussein Obama started off his career as an activist with a position as a community organizer for the Developing Communities Project (DCP) of the Calumet Community Religious conference (CCRC) in Chicago. Both the CCRC and the DCP were built on the Alinsky model of community agitation, wherein paid organizers learned, in Alinsky’s own words, how to “rub raw the sores of discontent”.

Posted By David Forsmark On January 4, 2010 @ 12:09 am In FrontPage | 133 Comments

The year of Obamarific “change” quickly became the year of dissent as Americans grew disillusioned with the “trillion here and a trillion there” spending of President Barack Obama even as unemployment rose. The so-called “Stimulus Package,” which promised to cap unemployment at 8%, did nothing to generate private sector jobs. The only area that seemed to be stimulated was joblessness, which soared above 10%.

Despite an economic disaster, the Democrats in Congress and the White House focused on socializing American health care and an economy-busting “cap and trade” scheme to hike energy taxes. To top it off, it seemed every day brought revelations about radicals with unconscionable views who either held high offices in the new administration or were funded with taxpayer money.

Suddenly, the loudmouths of the Left and the poobahs of the Lame-Stream Media — who had deemed dissent to be “the highest form of patriotism” when George W. Bush occupied the White House — whistled another tune. They began savaging of opponents of the Obama regime as Nazis, racists and ignorant rubes. Their targets weren’t just public figures who stood in the way of their agenda; rather, they viciously attacked ordinary Americans, the tea partiers, to whom they gave a sobriquet (tea-baggers) that no network censors would have allowed just a few years ago.

For our Man of the Year issue, we justifiably could have taken the cheap and easy route (such as Time circa 2006 [1]) and said it was the year of the “ordinary citizen.” After all, the anti-Obama Tea Party movement shook the foundations of the political establishment this summer.

All of our nominees contributed mightily to the informed dissent that gave hope for the right kind of change in the next few election cycles. Here are the nominees:

Dick Cheney

Ex-Veep Cheney, the man most hated (and feared) by the Left, won every argument he picked with Obama, scoring huge in the public arena on Attorney General Eric Holder’s ridiculous persecution of the CIA staffers who interrogated suspected terrorists; and he has been effective in all other national security debates. Almost as important as the vice president’s comeback is the emergence of daughter Liz Cheney as one of conservatism’s most articulate defenders. If this award were for Family of the Year, the Cheneys would be the hands-down winners.

Andrew Breitbart

Orginally known as Matt Drudge’s lieutenant in compiling the still-essential Drudge Report, Breitbart became the most influential conservative figure on the Internet this year. His smash hit site Big Hollywood [2] immediately became a must-read on a daily basis, and he launched Big Government [3] with the Story of the Year — the ACORN prostitution sting videos. With more sites on the way, Breitbart will continue to be one of the brightest lights in the conservative movement.

Sarah Palin

Palin, the Republican vice presidential nominee in 2008, deserves a slot on this list just for the self-revealing rage she generates with the liberal establishment. The former Alaska governor also is the most beloved figure among the ordinary people who are newly minted activists in the wake of Obama’s big government excess. Is there any other person who can change the debate and the political lexicon with a mere Facebook entry? Death Panel is certainly the phrase of the year.

Rush Limbaugh

One could make the case that Limbaugh has been the conservative MVP — most valuable player or politico — every year since 1994. It’s doubtful Obama ’s approval rating would be under 50% and Obamacare would hover at about 60% disapproval without El Rushbo. Instead of a routine annual update on Rush’s contribution to the debate, however, it’s time to just name the trophy after him and move on.

And the winner is…

Glenn Beck

Whether you love him or hate him, or consider him to be a must-see TV or DVR necessity, radio and TV talker Beck is a bright new star in the conservative firmament. You might get fired up by his calls to action or wince at his emotional outbursts – you even might tune in today only to see if this is when his head finally explodes—but you have to admit, this was the Year of the Beck.

In the past 12 months, Beck rose from hosting an obscure TV show on CNN Headline News to a terrible time slot on Fox News’ cable juggernaut. Regardless, his show at 5 p.m. became a ratings smash hit and attracted direct angry response from the White House.

Beck’s show now attracts a far bigger audience than his competitors on CNN, MSNBC and Headline News combined. In fact, he doesn’t really have any competition – on any given day, Beck can attracts 20 times the audience of Hardball with Chris Matthews on MSNBC.

This, indeed, was the Year of the Beck. In NBA terms, Limbaugh is the 30-points-per game superstar with several championship rings, who last year played for an otherwise pathetic team. Beck is the team’s rookie draft pick who exceeded expectations and brought fresh energy that caught the other team flat-footed and changed the game.

Beck is such a major part of the political landscape today that it’s hard to remember he was still a minor factor just a year ago. Sure, his books sold very well, and his radio show was making a move to the top tier of the market; but during the 2008 election, the Left and the MSM were not sneering and using the term, “Limbaugh/Hannity /Beck,” and Obama was not calling him out by name.

In one short year, the epithet has become “Limbaugh/Beck/Palin,” and the White House is responding defensively.

Beck made the cover of Time magazine, was one of Barbara Walters’ “10 Most Fascinating People of 2009″ and makes an almost nightly appearance as one of Keith Olbermann’s “Worst People in the World.” (A great honor, no doubt.)

Probably no other broadcaster in any medium is as in tune with the feisty mood of the times. While other talk show hosts certainly connect with the Tea Partiers, and I’m sure the vast majority of them listen to Limbaugh and watch a certain amount of Hannity, no media figure has the direct connection to the Tea Party dissidents that Glenn Beck enjoys. No one.

Only Sarah Palin gets that kind of love from the crowds that have House Speaker Nancy Pelosi shaking in fear, and making up wild accusations on the while the cameras roll.

In his rookie year on live television, Beck has the White House reeling. He already has two major scalps dangling from his lance—self-proclaimed communist Van Jones, the green jobs czar, and White House Communications Director Anita Dunn, a devout fan of Maso Tse-Tung.

Leftist Cass Sunstein, the proposed “Regulatory Czar” who puts animal rights on a par with human rights, and Keith Jennings, a pedophilic Activist ironically named as Obama’s “Safe Schools Czar,” are also in his sights. While Breitbart deserves the lion’s share of the credit if ACORN goes down, no one has supplied more context on the community activist/con job organization and its tentacles into the Obama a Administration than Beck.

So where does Beck go from here? His meteoric rise in 2009 will be a tough act to follow. He obviously cannot again increase his TV audience tenfold — that would put him in “Who Shot J.R.” territory. He has gained an audience and, for now, seems to be holding it.

The cheap and easy analysis would be to suppose that Beck’s emotional approach will wear on the audience or he will burn out. However, as I learned when reviewing Beck’s latest bestseller, Arguing with Idiots [4], (still sitting at No. 3 as of this writing), Beck’s antics may draw people in, but there is a deep well of substance behind his act.

Beck, to be sure, is a performer and a showman. He takes risks, and enough of them pay off to make up for his small mistakes. Beck is attuned to the times, perfectly situated to benefit from the Obama backlash. However, he has the substance for the long haul.

Whether 2010 is another Year of the Beck, or not, it is poised to be a comeback year for conservatism. If it is, then Glenn Beck will have been a major part of the reason — and my bet is that is what will matter most to him.

Glenn Beck didn't always believe in what he was doing. "When I was young, I used to hear people say, 'He's a golden boy. Look at that guy. Can you imagine what he's going to be like when he grows up?' Well, I unfortunately bought into that. And I hadn't even found myself. Quite honestly, I was running from myself. But I knew how to work Top 40 radio."

"Golden boy" was no exaggeration. "I was in Washington, D.C., on the morning show, by the time I was 18, programming a station by 19, No. 1 in the mornings. I think I was making, I don't know, a quarter of a million dollars by the time I was 25," he tells me in his midtown Manhattan office, a few blocks from the Fox News Channel studio where he now broadcasts his eponymous program every afternoon.

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Associated Press .A drinking problem helped plunge Mr. Beck into personal and professional crisis: "By the time I was 30," he says, "nobody would work with me. I was friendless, I was hopeless, I was suicidal, lost my family—I mean, it was bad. Bottomed out, didn't know what I was going to do. I actually thought I was going to be a chef—go to work in a kitchen someplace."

Instead he found a calling in talk radio. It was late in the 1990s: "I did one of my first shows at WABC [in New York]. I was filling in for somebody. . . . I used to have to write everything out and keep copious notes on everything. I overprepped everything. And I got to the end of my first hour, and I looked down at all the notes, and I hadn't touched the first piece of paper. It was all off the top of my head. It was me being me. That's when I knew: This is what I have to do."

Mr. Beck, 45, has many detractors, but there's no denying that he has made a success of himself. In addition to his Fox show, he hosts "The Glenn Beck Program," syndicated on radio, publishes a magazine and a Web site, and has written seven books. "Somebody told me that our footprint in a month"—the number of people he reaches in all media—"is about 30 million," he says.

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Randy Jones .His politics are libertarian. "I really kind of dig this whole freedom thing," he says. "I'd like to pass it on to the kids." But he is pessimistic about the prospects for doing so: "I'm a dad, and I no longer see a way for my kids to even inherit the money that I'm making, let alone go out there, have an idea, and create it in their own lifetime."

Mr. Beck blames a political system that he describes as corrupt and out of touch, a sentiment that is widely shared: "People in Washington . . . not all of them, but a lot of them, are not men and women of honor anymore," he says. "I just saw a poll today that said 25% of Americans now believe that their government officials will, for the most part, do the right thing. Only 25%. It's the lowest number ever recorded."

Mr. Beck appeals to a slice of the remaining 75% with a style that is earnest and emotional; he is known to cry on air. Although he has reported on some major news stories, including the scandals involving Acorn and former Obama aide Van Jones, he thinks of himself as a commentator and entertainer rather than a journalist. "I'm not interested in breaking news," he tells me. "I'm interested in telling the story of what's going on and then trying to figure it out."

In doing so, Mr. Beck draws strong negative reactions for both his right-of-center views and his populist style. "Right now, I'm getting hammered by the left and the right, and I get hammered for being an opportunist," he says.

He pleads innocent, arguing that he was as hard on George W. Bush—especially over spending and immigration—as he is on Barack Obama: "Nobody seems to recall the years . . . when I was saying the same thing and program directors were calling me saying, . . . 'Are you kidding me? You're on a conservative talk radio network. You can't come out against George W. Bush.' Well, here it goes.

"That's why I connect now with the American people, because the listeners that . . . have been with me for a long time know that I have said these things at my own peril, that I'm not in it for—I mean, don't get me wrong. I'm a capitalist. I dig money. But I'm not in it for the money."

Cheerful and affable, Mr. Beck responds good-naturedly, even eagerly, when I ask him to respond to his critics. It's a far cry from the liberal stereotype of an angry hater. But his worldview has a dark side: "I don't believe our government officials will do the right thing. They will do the right thing for special interests and for some sort of agenda that they're not bringing me in on."

When I ask him to respond to the charge that he is a conspiracy theorist, he answers, "I am the guy who debunked conspiracy theory."

Mr. Beck says he received death threats from "truthers"—crackpots of the far left and the far right who believe that the U.S. government was behind 9/11—after he denounced them on his old CNN Headline News show in 2007. (Mr. Beck's revelation that Van Jones had signed a truther petition helped force Mr. Jones to resign from the White House Council on Environmental Quality in September 2009.)

"I said those people were a gigantic danger from within, because we must trust each other," Mr. Beck says. "There are limits to debasement of this country, aren't there? I mean, it's one thing to believe that our politicians are capable of being Bernie Madoff. It's another to think that they are willing to kill 3,000 Americans. Once you cross that line, you're in a whole new territory."

Yet while this is all to Mr. Beck's credit, it is not quite responsive to the question. It is possible, after all, to reject one conspiracy theory while espousing others, and the claim that "our politicians are capable of being Bernie Madoff" is, to say the least, a rather sweeping indictment.

Mr. Beck's answer: "I believe the conspiracies, quote-unquote, that are happening now are happening all out in the open. All you have to do is track their actions. Their actions speak louder than their words. It's easy to throw out, 'Well, he's a conspiracy theorist.' Why do you say that? 'Well, because they say they're not doing that.' But their actions show that they are.

"TARP, stimulus—a stimulus package that makes no sense whatsoever. No sense whatsoever! TARP, stimulus, health care that is behind closed doors, where they're giving Medicaid free to states, where they're saying, 'We're going to pay for it by reducing the cost of Medicare while we expand Medicare.' When you look at all those things, and you know that the people who are in and around the planning of those things believe in [welfare activists Richard] Cloward and [Frances Fox] Piven, believe in ["Rules for Radicals'" author] Saul Alinksy—that's not a conspiracy. That's a pretty good educated guess."

As an example, Mr. Beck notes that Sen. Tom Harkin, an Iowa Democrat, last month described the Senate health-care bill as a "starter home." Says Mr. Beck: "Sen. Harkin says to the progressive left, 'This is a starter home. Don't worry, we can add additions to this, and we'll grow it'"—a paraphrase of Mr. Harkin's remarks, but an accurate one. Mr. Beck continues: "Excuse me? That's everything that I've been saying you're going to do, and you've been denying it."

This fall, Mr. Beck drew friendly fire on an American Enterprise Institute blog from Charles Murray, a social scientist with strong libertarian political leanings, who conceded that "Beck is spectacularly right (translation: I agree with him) on about 95 percent of the substantive issues he talks about." But Mr. Murray does not care for Mr. Beck's manner: "Our job is to engage in a debate on great issues and make converts to our point of view. The key word is converts—referring to people who didn't start out agreeing with us. We shouldn't be civil and reasonable just because we want to be nice guys. It is the only option we've got if we want to succeed instead of just posture. The Glenn Becks of the world posture, and make our work harder."

Mr. Beck answers carefully: "I'm sorry he doesn't agree with me—doesn't agree with my approach." Then he notes the irony of a think-tank intellectual criticizing a populist media star for lacking broad appeal: "How many are reading his blog, and how many are listening to my radio show, television show, reading my books, going to conventions, seeing me on stage? I mean, I think, while I respect his position and his difference in opinion on presentation, I think one of us is probably reaching more people daily."

He continues: "Look, I know a lot of people will disagree with the way I present things. I am being myself—I am a guy who is a recovering alcoholic, who lived a pretty fast life, who works hard every day, quite honestly, not to use the F-word—it used to be an art for me. I am a work in progress. But I also am a businessman that looks to get the word out to the maximum number of people."

And he rejects the implication that his is a lowbrow appeal: "You name the conservative that can do a full hour—a full hour—on Woodrow Wilson and the roots of modern liberalism—for an hour—and have high ratings with it. . . . I had like three really big eggheads on the show, and people watched it. Now, you could be Charlie Rose all you want, but nobody's watching Charlie Rose."

Mr. Beck identifies with the Howard Beale character from the 1976 film "Network." Beale, played by Peter Finch, is a news anchor on a fictional broadcast network who has a nervous breakdown on air, becomes a raving populist, and is a big hit with viewers. Mr. Beck invokes the fictional anchorman's most famous line: "I am mad as hell, and I'm not going to take it anymore. The part of Howard Beale that I liken myself to is the moment when he was in the raincoat, where he figures everything out, and he's like, 'Whoa, whoa, wait a minute! Why the hell aren't you up at the window shouting outside?'"

Mr. Beck adds, "What the media wants to make me is the Howard Beale at the end, the crazy showman that's doing anything for money. That I don't liken myself to."

Some of Mr. Beck's detractors on the left, including MSNBC ranter Keith Olbermann, draw a more sinister cinematic analogy. Mr. Olbermann calls Mr. Beck "Lonesome Rhodes," the cynical TV demagogue played by Andy Griffith in 1957's "A Face in the Crowd."

"I had never heard of Lonesome Rhodes," Mr. Beck says. "I had never seen the movie. . . . As soon as I heard that, I watched it. . . . Lonesome Rhodes and I, I guess, had a few things in common. He was a drunk. I'm in AA; he wasn't. He, at the very beginning, said things that he believed—I think. I'm not really even sure on that. I used to not say the things I believe. . . . Now I've made a vow to myself—it actually comes from Immanuel Kant, the philosopher: 'There are many things that I believe that I shall never say. But I shall never say the things that I do not believe.' . . . The minute I violate that, I'm back to the old drunk Glenn."

The source of the comparison points to another difference between Mr. Beck and Lonesome Rhodes. Mr. Olbermann is no closer to the old ideal of the straightforward, objective newsman than is Mr. Beck, and cable television has yielded up a multitude of other personalities who blend news, strong opinion and entertainment in varying degrees, including Sean Hannity, Bill O'Reilly, Jon Stewart and, until his recent departure from CNN, Lou Dobbs.

By contrast, the authors of "A Face in the Crowd" and "Network" imagined their protagonists as singular sensations who drew massive audiences at a time when viewing options were far fewer. At his peak, Lonesome Rhodes claims 65 million viewers, more than one-third of the entire U.S. population in 1957. Mr. Beck's Fox show, the third-highest-rated on the cable news channels, averaged 2.9 million viewers a day in 2009, according to Nielsen Media Research. Even his estimated monthly multimedia audience of 30 million amounts to less than 10% of all Americans.

The development of cable television, with its diversity and audience segmentation, seems to have been a necessary condition for the emergence of such programming. Charles Murray may be right that Mr. Beck mostly preaches to the choir, but the observation applies equally to Mr. Beck's competitors and their respective choirs.

Mr. Taranto, a member of The Wall Street Journal's editorial board, writes the Best of the Web Today column for OpinionJournal.com.

It certainly didn't break any new ground, missed Pol Pot, and seemed a primer all the way around. Think it would have been useful to draw some of the links between Baathist, Palestinian, liberation theology, et al.

Having read Goldberg's book (Liberal Fascism) I think the piece would have been well served by bringing in the shared intellectual analysis of Mussolini and FDR. Indeed not doing so was a real missed opportunity. Also I found some of the editing graphics weird and distracting.

You know, after the arms sale to Taiwan I was saying to myself, "self, this bonehead pres don't have a set of stones so the only reason to do something as bold as sell 60 billion worth of arms to Taiwan is to misdirect attention from other forms of collusion.

Time magazine aleady had a hit piece on GB saying this interview with Massa is the beginning of the end for Beck - wishful thinking in my opinion. There are two books coming out - most likely left wing zealot hit pieces. I am not sure the MSM in its efforts to destroy Beck understand the phenomenon surrouding him is not about him - it is what he represents.

I will say his take on environmental issues irks me a bit. Yes the Green movement is a watermelon front (green on the outside, red on the inside) for liberal fascism, and yes human caused global warming is a crock, but there REALLY are deep serious problems out there. His mini-rant last night on Obama taking away fathes' fishing with their sons like on the Andy Griffith show IMHO simply was facetious or even disingenuous. When species of fish are being fished to the point of utter depletion it is not an unreasonable thought to say "Hey! No fishing for a few years!"

Anyway, Glenn IS awesome. He will not be taken down. Too many people watch his show for the Big Lie to work.

I don't know about Beck. While agree with much of what he says when it comes to politics and encroaching government et al. I have a hard time listening to him for more than ten minutes. He is really starting to sound like a televangilist. Today on the way to work he starts talking about some woman whose father died on Easter and she thought it was a blessing that that is when he died and then goes on talking about not to let name calling bother one and it sounds so religious and preacher like.

I think he is going off the wall and his success is going to his his head. I have to say he sounds a bit nuts giving the left some fodder.

Even Hannity who has this car salesman quality about him is much preferable to me. Beck sound like a cult leader like Jim Jones or something.

CCP, See what crafty says but it sounds like you are referring to radio and I think Crafty is watching his television show. I don't see cable shows so I only know him through radio. There can be a big difference in how they come across on the different media. Also Crafty may be viewing with commercials cut out (?) which I imagine makes quite an improvement in the quality of the time for the viewer.

Quite right Doug. I have never heard GB's radio show and, having satellite TV, I record the show and fastforward through the commercials.

Like the Founding Fathers, like me, GB believes in a Creator. As Ben Franklin said

"I have lived, Sir, a long time, and the longer I live, the more convincing proofs I see of this truth-that God governs in the affairs of men. And if a sparrow cannot fall to the Ground without his Notice, is it probable that an Empire can rise without his Aid?" --Benjamin Franklin, To Colleagues at the Constitutional Convention

Therefore I am unperturbed that this is part of GB's message; though I think he goes about it in a way that should not concern atheists as well.

Hannity I simply find to be a mediocrity. He irritates me even when I agree with him. I only watch him if there is something/someone I want to see e.g. Newt Gingrich. Perhaps my opinion of Savage is based upon too small a sample of airtime, but he struck me as a cranky guy past his prime , , , and his prime was never that good. As for Marc Levin, I have seen some youtube clips wherein his comments are but semi-witty insults for the true believers; recently though someone forwarded a 70 minute speech he gave at the Reagan Library which I thought had intellectual heft. Therefore at present I have him filed under "Need to know more about him".

On the way to the office today I turn on Beck radio and the first thing I hear is him discussing how shortly after his staff comes in in the morning they have a prayer session.

I am not kidding.

He sounds like he is giving us the spiritual stuff from alcoholics anonymous twelve step program.

He really sounds like a cult leader.

It is creepy.

And I appreciate the religious right and feel Jews have more in common with them than liberal Jews would think but I don't want the tea party to be hyjacked by Christian conservatives. Their voice should be heard but they don't control an entire political party as for me.

As he did last night, Beck can look the camera in the eye and speak from the heart for an hour off the cuff. Don't be fooled by his "regular Joe, self taught" spiel, IMHO the man actuall has a substantial grasp of quite a few issues and does a remarkable job of conveying complex issues to regular people.

As for the religion thing, I think his larger point, made by being a bit ostentatious about it, is that we do better as individuals and as a people when we look to our spiritual values instead of our government for substance in how to live.

I like Sarah and she certainly has the right enemies, but I doubt the intellectual heft or the life experiences to prepare for higher office. Perhaps a term or two in the Senate could give her some more substance.

CCP:When they speak of reaching to Christ for strength and direction, you need to translate to you own faith for meaning. I can't remember having a President who just won't go to church except for political reasons and his lack of belief or faith finds its way into policy, like the transfer of power from the people to the bureaucrats. Liberalism and atheism have a connection that must make liberal Jewish voters cringe. Wearing Christianity too openly turns them off worse.

I agree in general with CCP that this is no time politically to wear a specific religion on our sleeves. Fiscal survival - tax and spend issues, basically agreeing to a constitutionally limited definition and role for government should take center stage and difficult and divisive social issues beyond that can wait.

But commentators don't need 51% to succeed. There is an authenticity to Beck telling his audience who he is, where that focus may need to be different if he were a candidate.

Exactly so. Beck is consistently clear that he is not suitable material for being a candidate. He is also consistently clear about religious tolerance and regularly uses a wonderful Ben Franklin quote about the American religion.

Nice show last night. All last year the intro graphics for the show showed George Washington, Thomas Jefferson, and Martin Luther King. IMHO it is brilliant and profound to include MLK as a Founding Father (btw, I have done the same on our Founding Fathers thread on the SCH forum , , , great minds think alike )

One of the three guests last night was MLKing's niece. The other two were Ted Nugent and, said with love, a pointy head Princeton professor. Its a helluva a new coalition that Beck is building IMHO. Beck's theme and closing riff about the Anvil of Truth and the Hammer of Non-violence (MLK and Ghandi) is well and wisely chosen.

GB is running Founding Father Fridays for at least a month. #1 was Sam Adams. My son and I watched this together. Saved and awaiting our viewing is #2 on George Washington. #3 will be on the black patriots in MA.

Based upon what my son and I saw in #1, I recommend this heartily. Good family viewing too! Help educate your children right!

I awoke in the middle of the night and turned on cable and the GB show pops up. This was an interesting show about unions in America.The untold story. The rest of the story not told in liberal schools.

I didn't know for example the FDR was AGAINST public unions. He said they would hold the public sector hostage which is EXATLY what we see now.Sorry if there are any teachers or police officers on the board. I am not against either but thier unions do hold us hostage in NJ, at least. I believe it is happening in Kolifornia too.

It was JFK who originally signed the law in 1962 that would allow Federal employees to unionize.

It is interesting it was him since I've heard rumors he won the Democratin nomination thanks to mafia controlled unions.

WASHINGTON — It seems the ultimate thumb in the eye: that Glenn Beck would summon the Tea Party faithful to a rally on the anniversary of the March on Washington, and address them from the very place where the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. delivered his “I have a dream” speech 47 years ago. After all, the Tea Party and its critics have been facing off for months over accusations of racism.

But many of the busloads of Tea Party activists expected in Washington this weekend do not see any irony or offense. In fact, they have come to see the Tea Party as the aggrieved — its loosely affiliated members unfairly characterized, even persecuted, as extremists.

Eighteen months ago, many were moved to the streets by a belief that they had been not listened to by their representatives in Washington. (“How dare they ignore us?” reads a sign often seen at Tea Party rallies.) Now, encouraged by Tea Party leaders and people like Mr. Beck and Andrew Breitbart, whose BigGovernment.com is a source of news for many Tea Party supporters, they have adopted the language of the civil rights movement to describe their cause. Their sense of persecution has become a galvanizing force.

Consider the response last month when the N.A.A.C.P., the nation’s oldest civil rights organization, called on Tea Party leaders to denounce racist elements in their ranks — citing signs with racist slogans at Tea Party rallies.

Tea Party Patriots, the largest umbrella organization for thousands of local groups across the country, posted a petition on its Web site calling for the N.A.A.C.P. to revoke its resolution “condemning the Tea Party movement as ‘racist.’ ”

“It is nothing less than ‘hate speech’ for the N.A.A.C.P. to be smearing us as ‘racists’ and ‘bigots,’ ” the petition declared. “We believe, like Dr. Martin Luther King Jr., in a colorblind, postracial society. And we believe that when an organization lies and resorts to desperate tactics of racial division and hatred, they should be publicly called on it.”

On his radio show, Mr. Beck said he had not intended to choose the anniversary for his “Restoring Honor” rally on Saturday but had since decided it was “divine providence.”

Dr. King’s dream, he told listeners, “has been so corrupted.”

“Judge a man by the content of his character?” he said. “Character doesn’t even matter in this country. It’s time we picked back up the job.”

He later added: “We are the people of the civil rights movement. We are the ones that must stand for civil and equal rights, justice, equal justice. Not special justice, not social justice. We are the inheritors and protectors of the civil rights movement. They are perverting it.”

It has become an article of faith among Tea Party groups that any racist signs at rallies — “Go back to Kenya,” directed at President Obama, is just one example — are carried by Democratic plants sent in to make the Tea Party look bad.

In March, when members of the Congressional Black Caucus accused protesters at a Tea Party rally against health care of spitting on them and shouting racist epithets, Tea Party leaders suggested that those episodes had not occurred, saying there was no video proof.

At a rally in Searchlight, Nev., a week later, Mr. Breitbart argued that black Democratic lawmakers had set out to provoke the protesters. When they did not make racist comments, Mr. Breitbart said, the Democrats simply accused them of doing so.

He looked into the crowd and said it proved that the Tea Party was not racist. “I see black faces, Hispanic faces. I’m Jewish,” he said. “Shalom, Nevada!”

In response to the N.A.A.C.P. resolution last month, Mr. Breitbart claimed reverse racism. He publicized a video of an Agriculture Department official, Shirley Sherrod, saying that she had discriminated against a white farmer. The video turned out to be heavily edited — in fact, Ms. Sherrod had helped the farmer and had actually been telling a longer story to make a point about the need for racial understanding.

Still, Tea Party leaders say they are outraged, as anyone would be, by accusations of racism: they do not see themselves that way.

FreedomWorks, a Washington advocacy group that has encouraged the growth of the Tea Party, is planning to take out full-page newspaper advertisements highlighting black, Hispanic and Jewish Tea Party members to make the point that the movement is diverse. It is also sponsoring a new documentary about black involvement in the cause.

Tea Party supporters argue that it is progressives who are fomenting racial division.

In a rally in April here at the National Mall, Deneen Borelli, a black conservative, told the crowd that Tea Party supporters were in an impossible position: “If you are white they call you racist or a redneck. If you are black, they call you a token, a traitor, an Uncle Tom.”

Polls show that the movement has not attracted blacks proportionate to their representation in the larger population. And some Tea Party leaders acknowledge that.

FreedomWorks advises Tea Party leaders to put Hispanics and blacks on stage at rallies to show that the movement is not racist.

Alveda King, a niece of Dr. King, is scheduled to speak at Mr. Beck’s rally, and many Tea Party supporters say this is evidence that they hold no racial animus.

Lloyd Marcus, a black singer who has performed on the cross-country tours of the Tea Party Express, often introduces himself by saying, “I am not an African-American, I am a Lloyd Marcus American!”

In a letter posted Friday on the social networking Web site Tea Party Nation, Mr. Marcus wrote, “Glenn Beck’s values and principles are far more consistent with M.L.K.’s values than the black civil rights leaders who have sold their souls to the anti-God, anti-family and anti-America progressives for political power.” He signed it, “Lloyd Marcus, unhyphenated American.”

In the Tea Party’s talk of states’ rights, critics say they hear an echo of slavery, Jim Crow and George Wallace. Tea Party activists call that ridiculous: they do not want to take the country back to the discrimination of the past, they say, they just want the states to be able to block the federal mandate on health insurance.

Still, the government programs that many Tea Party supporters call unconstitutional are the ones that have helped many black people emerge from poverty and discrimination. It is not just that Rand Paul, the Republican nominee for Senate in Kentucky, said that he disagreed on principle with the provisions of the Civil Rights Act of 1964 that required business owners to serve blacks. It is that many Tea Party activists believe that laws establishing a minimum wage or the federal safety net are an improper expansion of federal power.

Critics rightly note that Dr. King spoke over and over of the need for this country to acknowledge its “debt to the poor,” calling for an “economic bill of rights” that would “guarantee a job to all people who want to work and are able to work.” In Mr. Beck’s taxonomy, this would make him a Marxist.

Even if Tea Party members are right that any racist signs are those of mischief-makers, even if Glenn Beck had chosen any other Saturday to hold his rally, it would be hard to quiet the argument about the Tea Party and race.

America is better than Glenn Beck. For all of his celebrity, Mr. Beck is an ignorant, divisive, pathetic figure. On the anniversary of the great 1963 March on Washington he will stand in the shadows of giants — Abraham Lincoln and the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. Who do you think is more representative of this nation?

Consider a brief sampling of their rhetoric. Lincoln: “A house divided against itself cannot stand.”

King: “Never succumb to the temptation of becoming bitter.”

Beck: “I think the president is a racist.”

Washington was on edge on the morning of Aug. 28, 1963. The day was sunny and very warm and Negroes, as we were called in those days, were coming into town by the tens of thousands. The sale of liquor was banned. Troops stood by to restore order if matters got out of control. President John F. Kennedy waited anxiously in the White House to see how the day would unfold.

It unfolded splendidly. The crowd for the “March on Washington for Jobs and Freedom” grew to some 250,000. Nearly a quarter of the marchers were white. They gathered at the Lincoln Memorial, where they were enthralled by the singing of Mahalia Jackson and Joan Baez. The march was all about inclusion and the day seemed to swell with an extraordinary sense of camaraderie and good feeling.

The climax, of course, was Dr. King’s transcendent “I Have a Dream” speech. Jerald Podair, a professor of American studies at Lawrence University in Wisconsin, has called Aug. 28, 1963, “the most important single day in civil rights history.” This is the historical legacy that Glenn Beck, a small man with a mean message, has chosen to tread upon with his cynical rally on Saturday at that very same Lincoln Memorial.

Beck is a provocateur who likes to play with matches in the tinderbox of racial and ethnic confrontation. He seems oblivious to the real danger of his execrable behavior. He famously described President Obama as a man “who has a deep-seated hatred for white people or the white culture.”

He is an integral part of the vicious effort by the Tea Party and other elements of the right wing to portray Mr. Obama as somehow alien, a strange figure who is separate and apart from — outside of — ordinary American life. As the watchdog group Media Matters for America has noted, Beck said of the president, “He chose to use the name, Barack, for a reason, to identify not with America — you don’t take the name Barack to identify with America. You take the name Barack to identify, with what? Your heritage? The heritage, maybe, of your father in Kenya, who is a radical?”

Facts and reality mean nothing to Beck. And there is no road too low for him to slither upon. The Southern Poverty Law Center tells us that in a twist on the civil rights movement, Beck said on the air that he “wouldn’t be surprised if in our lifetime dogs and fire hoses are released or opened on us. I wouldn’t be surprised if a few of us get a billy club to the head. I wouldn’t be surprised if some of us go to jail — just like Martin Luther King did — on trumped-up charges. Tough times are coming.”

He makes you want to take a shower.

In Beck’s view, President Obama is driven by a desire to settle “old racial scores” and his ultimate goal is “reparations” for black Americans. Abe Lincoln and Dr. King could only look on aghast at this clown.

Beck has been advertising his rally as nonpolitical, but its main speaker is Sarah Palin. She had her own low moment recently as a racial provocateur, publicly voicing her support for Laura Schlessinger, radio’s “Dr. Laura,” who went out of her way to humiliate a black caller by continuously using the n-word to make a point, even after the caller had made it clear that she was offended.

Palin’s advice to Schlessinger: “Don’t retreat — reload.”

(MARC: I have listened to the phone call in question and thought Dr.Laura, whom I generally like, in an effort to be anti-PC, which I certainly support, badly missed the mark. Palin, who unlike Dr. Laura was not working live, has less of an excuse. This comment of hers will come back to haunt her I think.)

There is a great deal of hatred and bigotry in this country, but it does not define the country. The daily experience of most Americans is not a bitter experience and for all of our problems we are in a much better place on these matters than we were a half century ago.

But I worry about the potential for violence that grows out of unrestrained, hostile bombast. We’ve seen it so often. A little more than two weeks after the 1963 March on Washington, the 16th Street Baptist Church in Birmingham was bombed by the Ku Klux Klan and four young black girls were killed. And three months after the march, Jack Kennedy was assassinated.

My sincere advice to Beck, Palin and their followers is chill, baby, chill.

My right honorable colleague Michael Moynihan has amusingly limned Beck’s freedom from accuracy, but the real reason I and my fellow coastal elites are wary of Glenn Beck is a lot more basic: He’s the fat kid you don’t want to be seen with at the lunch table. I'll admit it! I find Beck a little bit creepy and gross and needy, and he gives me this sense that things are not going to end well. But after hearing all this carping about him, I checked out a recent episode of his show to see if it had somehow changed from the breathless, flop-sweating dormroom tirade I remembered with some fondness. (It was the August 21 ep. if you want to check my math.) And my impression remains: Why is everybody down on this guy? Above all why are libertarians down on this guy?

Yes, he’s trying, as Moynihan memorably put it, to learn history and teach it at the same time. But so what? Like the dumpy woman with low self-esteem we all dream of, Beck makes up in enthusiasm what he lacks in natural gifts. I like the sense that he’s bringing you his findings as fast as they come in. You get the impression that two weeks ago Beck had never heard of Woodrow Wilson, yet now he has figured out that Woodrow Wilson was one of the most evil people of the 20th century, and he wants to tell everybody. There's something fun about that, a performance that invites you to help fill in details and fix errors. It's certainly something you don't see anywhere else on TV, a medium populated almost entirely by people who are more cocksure about everything than I am about anything.

The Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. was already dead when I was born, and yet I idolized him the way most children idolized athletes and pop stars. I had the poster and the T-shirt, I knew the speeches and the places he’d marched. He was smart and brave, steadfast and unmovable. He was a man consumed by conviction and possessed by the magnificent radiance of the earnestly humble. He was an eloquent speaker and a beautiful writer. He cared more about justice and equality than fame or fortune. He was a beacon of light in a world beset by darkness.

That’s why the nightmarish idea of Glenn Beck (who has called President Obama a racist and compared Obama’s America to “The Planet of the Apes”) holding a “Restoring Honor” rally on the 47th anniversary of — and on the same site as — King’s “I Have a Dream” speech, so incensed me.

Glenn Beck is the anti-King.

(I find it curious that many of the same people who object so strenuously to the Islamic cultural center proposed for Lower Manhattan, many on the grounds that it is inappropriate and disrespectful, are virtually silent on the impropriety and disrespect inherent in Beck’s giving a speech on the anniversary of King’s address.)

But Beck seems bent on appropriating the civil rights movement. In April, he read his audience the civil rights movement’s commitment card and then said, “Looks to me like the next phase of the 9/12 Project.” (9/12 is a “nonpolitical movement” started by Beck last year to “protect the greatest nation ever created.”) And Beck has said of this rally, “This is a moment, quite honestly, that I think we reclaim the civil rights movement.” Reclaim? From whom?

Beck wants to swaddle his movement in the cloth of the civil rights movement, a cloth soaked in the blood and tears of the innocent and oppressed, a cloth his divisiveness and self-aggrandizing threatens to defile.

In fact, to even insinuate that the president’s policies are in any way equivalent to the brutality of the Jim Crow South at the time of the civil rights movement is the highest order of insult, particularly to those who lived and suffered through it, as well as to those who live with its legacy. If Beck truly thinks these movements are comparable, I have some pictures of “strange fruit” I’d like for him to see.

And yet, I’ve come to the conclusion that anger is the wrong reaction to Beck’s rally in Washington. Anger provides too low a return on investment. It consumes a tremendous amount of energy, but yields little progress. Instead, we should each take this opportunity to listen to the “I Have a Dream” speech once more, paying particular attention to how the echoes of yesterday’s struggles reverberate in our present struggles, and to recommit ourselves to the nobility of righteous pursuits.

Fox News' Glenn Beck and thousands of like-minded activists gathered Saturday in the nation's capital on the anniversary and at the same site of the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr.'s famous "I Have a Dream" speech, a demonstration meant to pay tribute to American troops.

Civil rights leaders, meanwhile, are planning to protest the event, claiming that the timing and location of the rally is a dishonor to King's legacy.

Beck, a Fox News personality and a conservative favorite, has said it is a coincidence that his "Restoring Honor" rally on the steps of the Lincoln Memorial is overlapping with the 47th anniversary of King's speech. Former Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin is expected to attend along with some 100,000 people. District of Columbia officials had granted a permit for some 300,000.

Beck and other organizers say the aim is to pay tribute to America's military personnel and others "who embody our nation's founding principles of integrity, truth and honor." The broadcaster toured the site Friday as supporters cheered.

"It was not my intention to select 8-28 because of the Martin Luther King tie,” Beck said on his radio show in June. “It is the day he made that speech. I had no idea until I announced it.”

The Rev. Al Sharpton called the demonstration an anti-government rally advocating states' rights. And Sharpton said that goes against the message in King's speech, in which the civil rights leader appealed to the federal government to ensure equality.

"The structural breakdown of a strong national government, which is what they're calling for, is something that does not serve the interests of the nation and it's something that Dr. King and others fought against," Sharpton said Saturday on C-SPAN.

"It is ironic to me that they come on the day of a speech where Dr. King appealed for a strong government to protect civil rights and they're going to the site of Abraham Lincoln who saved the union against the state rebellion," he said.

Sharpton and others planned to rally at a high school and march to the site of a proposed King memorial not far from the Lincoln Memorial.

Beck, a Fox News personality and favorite of conservatives, has given voice to those angry and frustrated with President Obama and other Democrats this election year, especially members of the tea party movement.

A conservative blogger's assertion that parts of the nation's capital should be avoided as unsafe, created an uproar on the blogosphere, accusations of racism and a sharp response by angry city leaders.

With emotions already high, the work of a largely unknown tea party blogger, Bruce Majors, brought them to a fever pitch on Friday.

The blog, which first appeared last Monday and has been widely viewed and distributed since then, warned conservative protesters visiting the nation's capital to avoid certain subway lines, suggesting they are unsafe, that certain neighborhoods should be avoided, that the city is populated by the world's refugees -- that taxi drivers are often Arab or African -- and that generally visitors should be wary.

And it inspired a satirical map of Washington with all of the city marked unsafe, except for the tiny sliver of the National Mall, home to the Lincoln Memorial. Some people mistakenly assumed the map was put out by Beck rally supporters.

For those not familiar with GB's show, I would point out that for all of 2009 the show's opening graphics featured 3 pictures; one each of George Washington, Thomas Jefferson, and Martin Luther King. The message to me was pretty clear: MLK is an American Father just as much as were GW and TJ. The point was underlined by the inclusion in the montage of other fotos of a famous one from the 60s civil rights era of a black man holding up a sign "I am a man".